Combined Wavelet-Domain and Motion-Compensated Video Denoising Based on Video Codec Motion Estimation Methods

Integrating video coding and denoising is a novel processing paradigm, bringing mutual benefits to both video processing tools. In this paper, we propose a novel video denoising approach of which the main idea is reusing motion estimation resources from the video coding module for video denoising. In most cases, the motion fields produced by real-time video codecs cannot be directly employed in video denoising, since they, as opposed to noise filters, tolerate errors in the motion field. In order to solve this problem, we propose a novel motion-field filtering step that refines the accuracy of the motion estimates to a degree that is required for denoising. Additionally, a novel temporal filter is proposed that is robust against errors in the estimated motion field. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed denoising scheme is of low-complexity and compares favorably to the state-of-the-art video denoising methods.